Net News: 12th November 2012

Soooo, there was an election. Which tended to dominate the news for the last week. But what can we, as book lovers, glean from this occasion? Possibly that an American President should include a generous sampling of both English and American classics on their list of favourite books. Did you know Barack Obama counts Moby Dick, as well as authors Mark Twain and Shakespeare among his favourites?

Kelly J of Stackedhas created this amazing (albeit heavily American) flow-chart for finding great YA reads. Start with the blue box in the middle and explore the many aspects contemporary YA has to offer!

Book enthusiasts have had a plethora of events to keep up with recently. Sydney hosted the Emerging Writers’ Roadshow where writers learnt to tell the story they are passionate about, and to not submit manuscripts to publishers in envelopes filled with glitter.

Sydney also hosted Australia’s first GenreCon, for geeks from all genres and careers! You can catch up on the hot tips for writers here. And Twitter tells us next year’s GenreCon will be hosted in Brisbane, and will include an academic stream – so pencil that appointment in your November 2013 calendar!

In Melbourne, independent publishers gathered together at the Independent Publishers Conference. Hot topics included the future of print, the role of the ebook and Print-on-Demand technologies, and what pricing and marketing models work in today’s market. If you’re keen to get the nitty gritty, you can check out the #indpubconf feed. Below are a few points of interest reported by Bookseller+Publisher:

Across the other side of the pond, Charleston in the US had their annual Young Adult book festival YALLfest. In fact, it happened so recently we’re still waiting for all the bloggers to get home and write-up all the details of what took place! Let us know if you see some good recaps!